Not sure why you're deliberately choosing to ignore that people can get
seriously ill from the disease and possibly end up with long-term
complications. It's not binary, that either you die or it's fine. Read up on
âlong haulersâ if you havenât heard about this yet.
Also, the disease carries high risk for overweight people with a BMI of 30 or
more, which literally includes about 40% of the American population.
Massachusetts Covid hospitalizations are up 67% from mid August exactly because
people who donât understand how pandemics work are ignoring basic public safety
measures and gathering indoors without masks. Hospitalizations will keep going
up until hospitals are overwhelmed - unless we *all* take some common-sense
precautions. Personally Iâd rather limit gathering sizes and wear a mask when
around people not in my household than risk the need for another lockdown
because hospitals have to cancel non-emergency procedures again.
Framingham is already at high risk of community transmission. If we move from
trending poorly to the virus raging out of control, there will be a lot more
deaths, a lot more severe illness, and an even worse economy. It is abundantly
clear now that many people care enough about their own health and the health of
others that they won't resume normal activities during a raging pandemic. We
need to crush the virus not only for public health and safety *but also to get
back to a normal economy.*
As for âprotecting the vulnerableâ, Massachusetts has done a poor job of this.
We have the highest death rate per known new Covid-19 case in the US, according
to one analysis - and that's recent, not cumulative - made all the more
striking by our relatively low positivity rates (so we're finding a higher
proportion of cases than many other states). I don't hear anything from Gov.
Baker on how we will fix this.
Among the people who died after the super spreader wedding in Maine, ZERO
actually attended the wedding. One was an older woman who had been very careful
in trying to isolate. Someone goes to a party, then goes to work or a
restaurant and infects someone else, who then has contact with someone else.
Unless you are prepared to say that anyone who is older or immunocompromised
needs to live in solitary confinement indefinitely, never seeing their loved
ones, âprotect the elderlyâ rings rather hollow.
That's it for me here arguing about this, go ahead and have the last word. I
get my pandemic information from a wide variety of experts in the field. They
don't always agree â there is a lot of discussion about outdoor recreation
areas, for example, and when/how to resume in-person schooling safely. But
literally none of them believes it's possible to confine a pandemic outbreak to
young people, or that a case fatality rate below 3% means it's safe for most of
society to carry on as usual. I find listening to experts with experience
studying and fighting other epidemics and pandemics a better way to make
decisions about my personal health and policies I support than reading a random
email with one data point and zero context
2.79% is a huge risk level when you're talking fatality rates. I wouldnât get
on a plane with a 2.79% risk of crashing (that would be over a thousand crashes
a day). I wouldnât drink bottled water with a 2.79% risk of poisoning me.
I also bet you wouldnât vote for the Community Preservation Act if it raised
your taxes 2.79%. I'm pretty confident that CPA would add less than 1% to a
typical tax bill, yet I read arguments that it's a significant burden. I'd hope
all of those making that argument would be even more upset at a 2.79% death
rate. I do understand that any tax increase is a burden to people who are
already in difficult financial circumstances (and I believe there are some
exemptions for low-income taxpayers?). I think it's even more of a burden for
people to lose a loved one to Covid-19, and then read an email cavalierly
talking about 2.79% as a low death rate.